1991
by SkyborneVeggie
Summary: Stay, he had wanted to say, all those years ago. But he had said nothing, even as Illya had smiled and turned and left him alone at the gate.


Napoleon swallows a lungful of cold post-Christmas air and looks up, up, out over the balcony and into the damask sky.

It is over.

The world is quiet tonight, soft yellow lights flickering in the windows below. Families are all inside together, still cozied up in their holiday joy and making plans for the new year. It's different now, it's not like it was when the wall came down. This time nobody seems to notice.

Napoleon's eyes stray to the sea. Or rather, to where he imagines the sea would be, from his apartment there is nothing but concrete jungle as far as the eye can see, but.

He imagines the ocean. There, look, across the horizon. The massive expanse of it, vast and wide and so endlessly _blue_ (Darker, too dark, darker than). He imagines seawater stench filling his nostrils and his mouth and his throat, so thick he can taste it, acrid tainting the back of his tongue. Water lapping up around him, drenching his clothes and coating his skin with salinity.

He beaches on the coast of France, grains of sand squelching between his toes as he extricates himself from the La Rochelle brine, his fingers sticky with sun-dried ocean grime. It is a few thousand miles to the Heart of his journey still, but he'd walk it, he would. Crawl his way across a dozen countries, half of which he'd been to once, a lifetime ago, with.

It's six a.m. in Russia now. A person (not someone he knows, not anyone in particular) could be up right now, washing their hair and brushing their teeth and pretending to think about what to wear today even though they know they will always choose black.

Or, at least it's six in Moscow. It could be any other time some other city. He doesn't know… exactly… (Where is he going? He should know. Should've asked, but he didn't. Didn't want to know.)

A high, lilting voice calls him, pulls him back to earth and he can feel himself _thinning_.

"Come back to bed won't you? We've hardly had any fun yet." She is young (Or at least seems so to him now, she is older than he was when he first thought himself aging. Has he really been alive for so long?) and blonde and beautiful, with large eyes and full breasts, so of course Napoleon does as she says.

Later, after he's eaten her out and she's finished swallowing his cock and they're lying in stupefied stillness, it slips out of him.

"The USSR dissolved today."

"Really?" She stretches out and closes her eyes, a naked breast peeking through the sheets. "Hasn't that happened already?" She yawns, words slurring. "Good riddance." Then she rolls over and falls asleep.

Napoleon sits in the dark for a long time. He thinks of Illya on the day he left, all those years ago. He'd been there at the gate, watched as his partner had turned and stretched out his hand in farewell. Illya's hands had been ice, fingertips frozen as they pressed into the meat of his palm.

Napoleon remembers, him all done up in uniform, long strands of golden hair hidden neatly away in his military hat, his eyes ever-piercing immutable blue.

_Stay_, he'd thought as he clutched his hand. _Please. Let me ask you to._

But he could feel Illya slipping away, even as he was right there before his eyes.

The foreignness of the situation punched through him. This man, this strange Soviet officer before him, _was_ Illya. Was just as much a part of Illya as was the man he had come to know for the past fifteen years, the same man he'd trusted, the same man who'd saved and been saved, the man he'd longed and burned for. This too was him.

And so Napoleon had let go of his hand.

Something shifted then, in those inscrutable eyes of his that Napoleon could never read, and for a moment he wondered if he had been mistaken, and would it, would it really be so wrong plead with him? To get down on his knees and beg if he had to?

Then it disappeared, and Illya straightened. He smiled.

"Farewell, my friend."

He turned and climbed the ascending flight of stairs, and was gone.

Napoleon's fingers ache with the ghost of a memory. He pictures him now, the Soviet officer, perhaps a bit thinner and worse for wear. The officer smiles at him, in his mind.

_Napoleon…_

A hand reaches out to caress Napoleon's cheek. For a moment he thinks he can feel the whisper of lips across his brow, but when he opens his eyes there is nothing, nothing there at all.


End file.
